In May 2013 a piano was left outdoors in private woodland near Canterbury, UK. Each month for a year composer Sam Bailey played the piano, improvising in response to the instrument’s changing state. A community of audience members and artists grew around the project and the performances began to involve other musicians, dancers, poets and filmmakers. By the time the last performance took place on Saturday 3rd May 2014 over 50 different artists had taken part in the project.

The project was documented by Neil Sloman (photographs), Ben Rowley (16mm film) and Ben Horner (interviews). Each performance was audio-recorded and made available via this blog.

Piano in the Woods culminated in an exhibition the Sidney Cooper Gallery and has been developed by Canterbury Dance Company into a multi-media performance.

The Piano in the Woods project has now come to an end. The last performance took place on 3rd May 2014 (see below for details and a recording).

I intend to write more fully about my experience of piano in the woods later in the summer. There has been so much to say that I haven’t yet been able to start…

In the meantime here is a lovely audio documentary about the project made by sound artist Ben Horner and I’ve reposted the wonderful short film that Ben Rowley made of us moving the piano into place at the beginning of the project.

Below that is a list acknowledging all the amazing people who collaborated on this project.

Piano in the woods was a collaborative project made possible with the help of:

This performance took place after dark and wasn’t filmed or photographed. However, Neil Sloman took these portraits of Toma that afternoon while he was setting up the piano with his lithophonic percussion.

The last Piano in the Woods performance will happen this Saturday (3rd May 2014) at 9:30pm and will feature lithophonic percussion virtuoso Toma Gouband and myself. If you have been before you can just turn up and give your name at the gate, otherwise email me for directions (sambailey1@mac.com).

Alongside this performance is an exhibition of photographs, films and recordings from the project at the Sidney Cooper Gallery in Canterbury. The show is called Cloud/Cuckooland and features a new installation from sound artist Janek Schaefer along with lots of information on the so-called “Canterbury Sound” and students’ work.